Tired of life in ‘Trump’s Place’
Must a New York City condominium forever bear the name T-R-U-M-P in large, brasslike letters? Or can it choose to take them down in favour, perhaps, of what a majority of residents believe is a more dignified name, 200 Riverside Blvd., its simple street address?
That is the question before a state Supreme Court judge in Manhattan as part of a heated legal battle between the condominium’s board and DJT Holdings, a corporate entity owned by U.S. President Donald Trump.
There was a time in New York City and beyond when developers and businesses proudly emblazoned the Trump name on their residential buildings, hotels, steaks and water. But since Trump was elected president, a small countertrend has emerged.
T-R-U-M-P letters have been peeled off three rental buildings also on Riverside Blvd., as well as hotels in SoHo and Toronto. The Trump name was also excised from the now-defunct Taj Mahal casino, but that happened at Trump’s insistence.
The embattled condominium is part of a development that stretches from 59th to 72nd St. along the West Side, known variously as Riverside South and Trump Place. Trump bought the property, a former rail yard, in the1980s, but with his business in distress, he ended up selling it to a group of Hong Kong billionaires who, with his help, developed it.
The Trump name was cemented in place by a fourpage licensing agreement, signed in 2000. It described Trump as a “worldwide renowned builder and developer of real estate who enjoys the highest reputation in these fields among others,” but set only a modest value on the use of his name: $1. Not payable monthly or even annually, but $1 in total.
The name was not an issue until the presidential campaign in 2016 and Trump’s subsequent election, when some residents began to object.
“I felt that he was way far right of my politics,” said Harvey Koeppel, who described himself as the first resident of the building. “I also felt he was dishonest.”
At three nearby rental buildings — 140, 160 and 180 Riverside Blvd. — the sentiment among tenants was so anti-Trump that the T-R-U-M-Ps on their buildings were removed before the president took office.
At 200 Riverside Blvd., the board’s residential committee conducted an anonymous survey of residents last February about whether to keep or remove the Trump name.
“A majority was in favour” of removing the Trump letters, Koeppel recalled.
Just before a meeting of unit owners to discuss the survey results, on March 29, Alan Garten, the chief legal officer of the Trump Organization, sent a letter to the board saying that removal of the letters would constitute a “flagrant and material breach of the license agreement.”
With a new board on its way in, a decision was delayed. Then, recently, the residential committee of the board asked the court to issue a declaratory judgment that the condominium has the right to use or remove the letters without violating its licensing agreement with Trump.
The committee said in its suit that the agreement “does not obligate the board to use or display identifications,” but rather “grants the board the right to use the identifications should the board choose to do so.”